Things You Don't See In Farwell

You know, I'm pretty sure no matter how hard the good people at Rice Tard try, a snack with that name just isn't going to be popular in the USA. (see Konglish, below)




Konglish (Korean: 콩글리시) is the use of English words (or words derived from English words) in a Korean context. The words, having initially been taken from English language, are either actual English words in Korean context, or are made from a combination of Korean and English words. (thanks wikipedia!)




SHINY SUITS!!!!!




The ubiquitous murse. That'd be a man-purse to those unaware of the term murse.




Shirts that don't make any sense.




This is from the toilet museum. It's a dog eating baby poo.

At 6:10 I realized that I was reading Siddhartha and listening to Blues Traveler and I had the sweet taste of iced chai and cheesecake in my mouth, and somehow I was in Seoul, and it was all real.

Random Photos

My new favorite place for a "good day."




A good day indeed!




Cool little place.




Interesting eh?




A cute little flower, does anyone know what kind is it?




The roof of the building across the way. I thought it looked cool.




The rather phallic Ilsan Police Station. Notice the testes as well? Just great...




This is roughly the area we call meat street. It's got a ton of bars and such. And, as you may be able to tell, a few churches too.




A view from the roof of my building, some of my co-workers live in that large building.

Fan Death

Yes, people in Korea really do believe this. Even the college educated.



Also, one of my students informed me that hamburgers are poison. If you eat more than one per year, you will die. She also has a message for all of you Americans who think squid is gross, "Americans are crazy. Squid is very very delicious."

Photos of the Kids!!!!

Temple Time

Check these pictures out, from a Buddhist Temple in Seoul.

Teacher is Mean

So yesterday was April Fool's Day, and I thought it was a great chance to teach some of my older kids about an American tradition.

In Korea, some of the older kids are aware of the day, but they call it Lie Day. As in you tell people lies. Some of the kids caused a mini-stir when they called home on their cell phones to tell their parents that they had an extra test and needed to stay at school for an extra hour. Of course the parents called the school, and the people at the desk and to come in and scold the kids. For the record they called from the bathroom, so no teachers knew what they were doing.

I decided that with these older kids, I could play a prank on them. They are all in 5th grade, so they're pretty with it. Well I went to and printed of some word searches. Which were impossible.

We have a sticker reward system at my school, and on the typical day a kid gets 2-4 stickers. I offered 10 stickers to the first person who could solve the word search.

We had plenty of time after our lesson, for some reason the class is 10 minutes longer than all other classes but we don't get much more material, so I gave them 15 minutes to work on it. At the end of class, I told them all "April Fools!"

They were not impressed.